General information

Authors: A.A.Fuente, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain; A.Texeira, L.Morgado, Universidade Aberta, Portugal.

The general goal of this training material is to help teachers create academic materials while complying with the Intellectual Property (IP) laws, with licenses as the main point of interest. The focus is on Creative Commons (CC) licenses, as this licenses are probably the licenses of choice in the academic field.

Unit 1 introduces the main concepts needed to understand IP, including licenses. In Unit 2 we will learn about CC licenses and how to use them.

Unit 3 introduces additional IP concepts, as differences between countries in IP laws reside in these areas and they must be taken into account by the author of academic materials. These regional particularities are treated in Unit 4.

Creators of materials can use resources from others. In Unit 5 we will learn about the different types of resources that can be used, and a specific process to assure compliance with IP law when using these resources by checking the licenses. Unit 6 shows how to search for these resources considering the resource license.

The last unit is devoted to registration, which is usually the last thing done regarding IP when developing academic materials

Unit 5. Using third party resources

As creators of IP works, authors often use works (resources) created by others. For example, when developing academic course material, the author has a range of different types of materials (text, images, etc.) developed by other authors available to use. Sample materials could be photographs and clipart from to illustrate concepts, text passages and definitions from a textbook, reinforcement slides for other concepts, etc.

When using other’s material, there should be a planned process for the correct usage of the materials. The materials can not be used freely. Each one can only be used with the author’s permission (in the form of general license or individual license-direct permission), that must be honoured complying with the conditions imposed by the author.

Materials licensed with the Creative Commons Licenses have always at least one condition: the user must give credit (attribute) the author of the original material. CC attribution can be done in a number of ways. This unit shows the preferred CC attribution style.